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LECTURE BY 



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WENDELL PHILLIPS,! 



In St kin way Pall, New York. 



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NEW YORK: 
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144 Nassu Street, 

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"DANIEL O'CONNELL," 



LECTURE 



BY 



WENDELL PHILLIPS, 



IS STEINWAY HALL, NEW YOEK, DEC. 1872, 



** I THINK THAT GOD NEVER FURNISHED FORTH, SINCE DEMOSTHENES, AN OrATOB 
MORE LAVISHLY FOR HIS WORK, THAN THE GREAT IRISH CHIEF, 

Daniel O'Connfll ! " — Wendell Phillips. 



NEW YORK: 

J. W. O'BRIEN, PUBLISHER, 

142 NASSAU STREET, 
1872. 



60 



1*1 

i V 



FE3 12 1910 



Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1873, by 

J. W. O'BRIEN, 
la the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



PUBLISHER'S PREFACE. 






Wendell Phillips' celebrated lecture on Daniel O'Connell 
has for many years held the attention of all classes to a 
greater extent than any discourse of any lecturer in this 
country. Late events have suggested to the accomplished 
gentleman fresh thoughts connected with his hero and his 
theme. The lecture on " O'Connell," was pronounced by 
Mr. Phillips, at Steinway Hall, New York, on December 
9th, 1872, at the point of time when a new current of 
thought on the Irish question was flowing through men's 
minds here, and the international historical controversy be- 
tween English and Irish scholars was drawing to a close. 
It was at once hailed by critic and student, by the unlettered 
(t* and the litterateur alike ; by the Irishman and the New 
Englander with equal enthusiasm, as perhaps the very finest 
discourse in the English language ; the most finished in 
style, most symmetrical as a literary composition, and most 
elevated in tone and sentiment. Having listened to the 
lecture, and being convinced of its great value at the time, 
the publisher determined to bring it out in pamphlet form 
at once for general circulation among the American popula- 
tion as well as the countrymen of O'Connell. A complete 
and exclusive stenographic report of it, carefully revised, 
is here presented to the reader. 

The "silver-tongued orator" of the East has an audi- 
ence that no other living man commands. The eminent 
American agitator eulogizing our Irish agitator, offering' to 



iT. PUBLISHER'S PREFACE. 

his name and cause heartiest plaudits and benedictions; 
giving facts, and dates, and details of Ireland's sufferings 
und Ireland's heroism, will do much to arouse our native 
American population to a true appreciation of the Irish 
haracter and the Irish nation. And assuredly this is "a 
consummation devoutly to be wished;" — that we may be 
most closely cemented in bonds of good neighborship, friend- 
ship and esteem with our fellow citizens, at the moment 
when England's emissaries are upon us with libels 'and 
calumnies, trying to plant distrust and discord between us. 
The circulation of this remarkable lecture of Mr. Phillips 
must accomplish untold good in this direction. The under- 
signed therefore hopes, in view of its manifest importance, 
that his fellow-countrymen throughout these states will 
take immediate measures to place it in the hands of their 
neighbors who are not of our race, and do not know our 
national story in the correct light in which it is here un- 
folded. 

Especial attention is directed to the admirable summary 
of the " pains and disabilities of the Penal Code." An en- 
umeration more compact, graphic, life-like and terrible 
never was made even by an Irishman. The mind is fasci- 
nated by the perspicuity and brilliancy of the narrative, 
while the heart is shocked by the dreadful oppressions and 
atrocities painted with such masterly skill and fidelity. 

This lecture is, in truth, a masterpiece. The tribute of 
a great American mind to a great Irish heart and intellect, 
if it is an offering of devotion at the shrine of O'Connell, it 
is no less a bright laurel in the wreath that crowns the 
brow of America's sweetest orator in our day, Wendell 
Phillips. It is American genius doing tribute to Irish 
genius, honoring America in vindicating Ireland, doing justice 
to her sons, resenting her wrongs and asserting her title to 
National Liberty, 

J. W. O'B. 

New York, Jan. 8th, 1873. 



"DANIEL O'CONNELL." 



LECTURE BY WENDELL PHILLIPS. 



DELIVERED IK 



STEINWAY HALL, NEW YORK, ON DECEMBER 9th, 1872. 



Ladies and Gentlemen, — I am to talk to you of O'Connell — Daniel 
O'Connel!, the champion of Irish Catholic citizenship, and the great 
example of modern agitation. I originally chose O'Connell as the sub- 
ject of a Lyceum lecture because he represented, better than any other 
man of the century, this modern element in constitutional government — 
Agitation. Yoxi know Sir Robert. Peel defined agitation to be the 
" marshaling of the conscience of a nation to mould its laws and ap- 
peal to the thought and the principle of a community to reach indi- 
rectly its ballot-bearing classes." It is an old word this, with a new 
meaning, and it plays a large part in the constitutional progress of the 
English race. You may trace it, indeed, back to the days of Cromwell 
and the 30,000 pamphlets of the civil war that formed the library of 
George LLT., and you can follow it down through the age of De Foe, the 
author of " Robinson Crusoe," the first great Englishman since the Re- 
bellion that flung a pamphlet at that little coterie of first cousins that 
used to be called the House of Commons, and then in a narrow and to 
a certain extent a superficial example, you may find it in Wilberforce, 
who, over Parliament, and in despite of Parliament, by leaning back on 
the religious purpose of Great Britain, broke three millions of chains, 
and went up to God, as Lamartine says, '• with eight hundred thousand 
broken fetters in his hands, as an evidence of a life well spent." 

But this was a superficial, and, to a certain extent, a limited example. 
The power, the reach, the real view and specific machinery of agitation 
England owes to Daniel O'Connell. He was the first to elaborate and 



82 WENDELL PHILLIPS' LECTURE ON " O'CONNELL." 

profoundly to deepen in the State the exact lines and limitations of 
the great modern element ; he taught the art to Cobden, and if the 
British people owe anything to Cobden for having lifted the bread tax 
from the loaves of Great Britain, he learned his lesson at the feet of 
the great Irish orator. 

And another thing that still further emphasizes his claim to repre- 
sent this element is the question — Who did the most with the least 
means ? Measuring what he had in his hands with the result he pro- 
duced, he is the most noticeable of all men that ever appealed to this 
element. And in this measurement few men even stand near him. 

I speak of him with the more pleasure to-night, because I would 
fain do something to brush away the cloud which our brilliant English 
brother (Mr. Froude) leaves on the memory of O'Connell. As if he 
were merely a platform agitator, caught spasmodically, as it were, act- 
ing on the mere outside shell of a political movement, and shipwrecked 
his influence by clinging to it after he was fairly exhausted. On the 
contrary, every laurel woven to-day over the brow of Gladstone in his 
treatment of the Irish, — and which must be his largest claim to the 
gratitude of Great Britain and the admiration of the English-speaking 
raC es — every laurel that is woven for his brow might be fairly said to 
be borrowed from the fame and worth of the great Irish champion. 

And it is by no means true that O'Connell confined himself to the 
simple remedy of repeal or Catholic emancipation. Education and 
the remodeling of the tenure of land, the dis-establishment of the 
Church, the removal of that chronic oppression, arising from the com- 
parative weakness and strength of the two religious establishments of 
Ireland. All these three questions O'Connell laid down in his speech- 
es in defiance of the public sentiment of that hour— which ridiculed, 
despised and hated, the very suggestions that carried into proper sup- 
port by the experience of half a century and the official influence of the 
British Premier are the claim of Great Britain to-day to the sympa- 
thy of the civilized world. 

I have another interest in the career of O'Connel. Some men 
wonder why the English scholar, who has just left you, should have 
brought to America so interesting a topic as the relations of Great 
Britain and Ireland, I do not wonder.. Every thoughtful Englishman 
knows that England to-day is occupying but a second rate place on the 
chess board of Europe ; that she has gradually sunk from the position 
of a first class power I was hissed when I said this in the Cooper 
Institute some eight y<*ars ago ; to-day many of the English journals 
acknowledge the fact and are searching around for an explanation of 
its necessity. The two things that have most largely conduced to this 
sad result are, first, the neglect of the British Government towards its 
own laboring masses ; Secondly the injustice of seven centuries towards 
Ireland. The occasions have been frequint within the last few years 



WENDELL PHILLIPS' LECTURE ON " O'CONNELL." 83 

■when England longed to draw the sword, when the England of Lord 
Chatham would have filing herself madly into the great military strug- 
gles of .the Continent. When Germany brought under its heel in con- 
tempt the little Kingdom of Denmark, that gave Great Britain the 
Princess of Wales, England longed to draw the sword. When within 
a few years Bismark struck her flatly in the face, ostentatiously in the 
face of all England — " snubbed " her is is the only word that describes 
that act — Great Britain longed to draw the sword ; but she knew right 
well that the first cannon shot she ventured to fire against a first-class 
power of Europe, Ireland would stab her in the back. 

Mr. Froude tells us that the wickedness of a nation was certain to 
be punished, no matter how long Providence delayed. He said " that 
the wickedness of one generation would assuredly be met by the weak- 
ness of another, if there were a half a dozen between them." Great 
Britain has held the j)oisoned chalice to the lips of her sister island for 
seven hundred years — poisoned by religious hate ; by the contempt of 
the Saxon race ; by the injustice of the most heartless government that 
ever disgraced civilized Europe — and to-day, in the Providence of God, 
Ireland holds back that chalice to her own lips, and in the weakness 
she cannot deny, and which her scholars come to us to explain as some- 
thing inevitable, and what they could not have avoided. 

On all this class of questions the career of O'Connell sheds the 
directest light ; but, of course, in order to give you any fair idea of 
the truth of this claim that I make for him, 1 must sketch for you, how- 
ever briefly, the history of Ireland that preceded, as a framework for 
my picture — as a background for the portrait. And in doing it I re- 
member two things. The reason why I seek to do it with fidelity, in 
order that you may stand with me an impartial jury and judge the 
lines of this picture, is because Mr. Froude, in his elaborate review of 
the history of Ireland, has never found any great Irish name which 
he condescended to praise. Grattan, after painting him an honest 
man, he finishes by leaving us with the suggestion that after all he was 
an honest simpleton. And to no single great name of Irish history 
has he condescended to give at the same time credit of an honest 
heart and common-sense head. And Harriet Martineau, who has 
found something to explain and something to excuse in every equivocal 
act of every British statesman ; who, however great her prejudices, has 
never run along the whole history of a representative Englishman with- 
out usually finding half a dozen occasions to praise him — in her 
whole history of O'Connell has never failed to find constant reason to 
blame him either for a bad act, or, if compelled to acknowledge the act 
was good, she is sure to search and find a bad motive. He is the only 
man in the whole gallery of the thirty years' peace of which this can 
be said, and yet in closing the roll which bears the name of O'Connell 
she is obliged to confess that there is no British subject who has ever 



84 WENDELL PHILLIPS' LECTURE ON " O'CONNELL" 

risen, in our day, to such a level of influence and authority by the sole 
power of intellect and purpose as Daniel O'Connell. 

Well, now, this history of Ireland we may begin somewhere in the 
reign of Elizabeth, for about that time begins the outlines of that 
Irish Code which makes the complaint and grievance of Ireland, and 
which O'Connell called " his only wand to evoke the sympathy of the 
eivilized world." About the age of Elizabeth begin that code of laws 
which, finally, at the period of William the Third, about 1692, be- 
came a complete and finished code. It grew out of two motives. 
Evidently the first is the hatred of the Saxon to the Celt — that 
almost immeasurable influence, the hatred between races — and this 
tlaxon race of ours, as you watch it marching down the centuries 
ibr a thousand years, has been the most domineering, over- 
bearing, imperious, heartless and cruel of all the races that have 
endeavored by the sword to clear a space about them for their 
o wn greed. And the second motive out of which grew the Irish Code 
was the religious hate — the hatred of the Protestant to the Catholic. 
And again the Irish Code took shape from two peculiarities of English 
theory. The genuine Englishman, in England, largely for the last fifty 
years, has no faith in any power to govern that does not rest on land; 
he has no theory or belief that any man has a right to civil power who 
is not a land-holder — who has not a " stake in the hedge;" and you will 
perceive, therefore, when I detail to you that this Irish Code has a dis- 
tinct purpose, which is to sweep out of the hands of Catholics every 
acre in Ireland, and, as Daniel O'Connell well said, " all the national 
and ineradicable sympathies of the human heart, and the chord that 
binds neighbors and kindred together, were debarred from part or por- 
tion in this hideous scheme of law." There was never, in his day, a 
single acre of Irish soil in the possession of a Catholic. 

Secondly, the Englishman's refuge from giving a government to the 
land, is to let the educated classes share in it, and that is the widest ex- 
tent that he is ever willing to go. Education, land — these are the cor- 
ner-stones of his government. 

Now can you well see that the provisions of this Irish Code were 
leveled at the possibility of the Irish Catholic getting any education ? 
Lawless, ignorant, he was to be ostracised from the possibility of 
civil power. And we sometimes fret when the Irish are thrown upon 
our shores by the hundreds or thousands, ignorant and degraded. But 
■we should rather all remember that in his country for centuries, to 
learn and to teach have been felonies publicly punished by the gallows, 
and that if he comes to us ignorant and demoralized, it was the malice 
of our own blood that compelled him by law to accept that condition 
of existence. 

I say this code grew out of these two motives — aiming at these two 
results — came to the perfection of a system in 1692. It remained 



WENDELL PHILLIPS' LECTURE ON « O'CONNELL." 85 

literally unaltered in the smallest item of its atrocities until 1792 — a 
full century. 

Let me tell you its provisions: — 

An Irish Catholic could not sit in the House of Commons; he could 
not serve the Crown either in a civil or military capacity ; he could be 
a common soldier in the ranks, but he could not hold the humblest 
office or commission ; he could not bring a suit in court ; he could not ' 
even give his evidence for anybody else in court; he could not sit on a 
jury. He could not vote; he could not be an administrator or executor 
for a friend; he could not practise as a lawyer; he could npt practise as a 
physician. Of course he could not be a priest; because a priest on Irish 
soil was hanged if he was caught. He could not travel five miles from 
his own residence without a permit from a justice of the peace. If he 
were a landholder he was obliged, if all his children were Catholics, to 
divide the land equally between them, which was the Englishman's idea 
of eliminating the land from this class, letting them slip out of the 
holding. But if one child professed Protestantism, that child might 
compel his father to put his whole estate in trust for his individual 
benefit. If he took a lease, he could not hold one for more than thirty- 
three years; but if in that time it increased one quarter in value, any 
Protestant neighbor, by informing a justice of that fact, took possession 
of the lease. A widow forfeited her dower, if she did not go to the 
Episcopal Church once a month, even if she thought it a sin to do it, 
but if, on the contrary, she professed Protestantism, she took all her 
husband's estate. Four justices of the peace might compel any Catho- 
lic to quit the realm and sell his estates, and three justices of the peace 
might compel him to give up all his estates or abjure his religion. 
Indeed, he could not own a horse; if any Catholic owned a horse and 
any Protestant met him in the saddle, he had only to offer him £5 and 
take any horse he saw. The Earl of Clare was once in his study, and a 
Protestant neighbor entered and laid down £25 on the table and said 
" Well, my lord, I come to take your five hunters" (they were worth 
$4,000). The earl preceded him to the stable and shot his hunters. 

So, if England was at war with any Protestant power in Europe — if 
she went to war at all, there were seven chances to one, she would be 
at war with a Catholic power ; : — but in such a war any Protestant who 
lost a ship had only to go home and assess the damage on his Catholic 
neighbors to reimburse himself. If the law laid a tax on a Protestant 
of one dollar, the Catholic paid two. So of education — if a father sent 
his son to a Catholic school to be educated, and he would not send him 
to a Protestant, he was fined a hundred dollars a week; the schoolmaster 
was fined twenty-five dollars a week, and for the third offence was 
hanged. If, on the-contrary, the father determined that his son should 
be educated, and sent him over the channel into France or to 
any other kingdom, the boy forfeited his citizenship ; he forfeited 



86 WENDELL PHILLIPS' LECTURE ON " O'CONNELL." 

•the rights of a British subject; he could not inherit and could not return 
to any privilege. The father was fined $500 for sending him, and by 
necessity the father who helped him go shared all his disabilities, and 
all his loss of all his civil rights — such as the right to vote, to 
sit on juries, and to bring suits in court. Indeed, a Catholic could not 
be married; the marriage of a Catholic with a Protestant was void; the 
children were bastards, but, if a Catholic sent for a Catholic priest for 
an hour to join in the marriage sacrament, the priest was punishable 
with death, and after all the marriage was not acknowledged by law. 
And to crown this climax of oppressive legislation, Sir Robert Peel, in 
his day, had the provision enacted, that, no Catholic should quit his 
dwelling betwixt sunset and sunrise — an intensification of the Curfew 
Law. 

This, substantially, was the law under which Ireland rested — or rather 
never would rest — for three hundred years. 

This is the law which Mr. Froude, after beginning with a perfect 
acknowledgement that Elizabeth failed in every duty that belongs to a 
worthy ruler, goes on to say that it was hard to see how in any par- 
ticular instance she could have acted differently. 

This is the law which Hugh O'Neill rose in rebellion against Great 
Britain to lift from the shoulders of his fellow citizens. O'Neill, 
brought up in the Court of Elizabeth, educated in all the knowledge and 
chivalry of the day, the moment he was emancipated from this guilded 
slavery and set his foot on the soil of his own island rose at the head 
of his people to fling off the yoke. And Mr. Froude says when he tells 
us that story, "the wolf treated as a dog is still a wolf" — that is an 
Irishman. "When Bruce, Robert — educated in the same way in the 
Court of Edward, flung away the guilded chains, the moment he took 
and drew the sword for Scotland and hurled his defiance at England — 
Oh ! then, in the language of Mr. Froude, he is a patriot, and Scotland 
is a model kingdom. 

He never, never compared Bruce to a wolf. When William the 
Silent left the Court of Spain, educated under the same circumstances, 
turning his heel to the chains which nothing concealed ; the moment 
he reached Holland and flung the Declaration of Independence at the 
Spanish Monarchy, Motley puts him on the pedestal where all Europe 
worships him. He is not a wolf ; it is only the Irishman, when he fol- 
lows humbly at a great distance in the steps of these great examples, 
or when preceding them he sets an example of this patriotic course, 
he is the wolf, treated like a dog who will remain a wolf. 

But, on the contrary, this is the code, of which even Henry, Lord 
Brougham since, said, " that the weight of English law had been so 
perfect that the Irish Catholic could not lift his hand without commit- ^ 
ting an offence." This is the code of which Edmund Burke once said, * 
" that the ingenuitv of the human intellect never succeeded in th«* : \- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS' LECTURE ON "O'CONNELL." 87 

vention of any instrument to disgrace a kingdom and destroy a race 
more perfect than this." This was the code which an English Lord 
Chancellor confesses, that, by the strict construction of the English 
law, "An Irish Catholdc had no Eight to Breathe !" 

This is the code, of which the statesmanlike and scholarly pen of 
Montesquieu, the calm jurist was prompted to say : " That it could 
have been written out only by devils, and ought to be written in blood, 
and the only place to register it was hell." 

Well, of course, a race like the Irish never sat down contented under 
such a code. I thank Mr. Froude that he has painted the Irishman 
as a chronic rebel. It shows that at least the race knew that they 
were oppressed, and gathered together all the strength that God had 
given them to resist. They never rested contented. i 

One of the wildest exaggerations of Mr. Froude is in regard to this 
very amount of resistance ; for, I observed in the lectures of that 
scholar, that when a guess in one direction would depreciate the Irish, 
he always accepted that direction. When, on the contraiy, it was nec- 
essary to guess in the other direction, in order to reach the same 
result, the pendulum ossilated on that side. For instance, the popula- 
tion of Ireland, prior to this century, is a matter of guess. Never was 
a census taken. Freynes Morrison, Secretary of Lord Mountjoy, in 
the commencement of the seventeenth century, estimated it at between 
five hundred and six hundred thousand men. Mr. Froude telling us 
that James the First confiscated six of the best counties in Ireland— the 
whole of freland has been confiscated between three and five times— says : 
"It did not much matter, because there were only half a million of men 
in the island, and there was room for a great many more." But I do not 
myself exactly comprehend the moral principle by which our Govern- 
ment, for instance, would be right in selecting six of the Hudson Kiver 
counties of New York, and confiscate all the estates of the owners because 
there was a great deal of wild land in Nebraska ! But Mr. Froude takes 
this case in order to excuse the action of the British Government, and 
he travels on fifty years to the time when Oliver Cromwell with twelve 
thousand men comes and speedily subdues the island. The object then 
is to exaggerate the population— to increase the resources— to swell 
the strength of Ireland in order to make the disproportion between 
the Saxon strength and persistence and Irish timidity and lack of 
force more remarkable. 

So Mr. Froude says it has been conjectured that in 1692— that was 
about thirty-eight years after— the prior case of half a million, the 
Irish population amounted to a million and half. That is, they doubled 
in thirty-eight years ; nay, they trebled in thirty-eight years. 

Poverty-stricken, war-ridden, all their young men in the camp, 
their subsistence scattered to the winds, they still trebled in thirty- 
eight years ! With our overflowing immigrations ; with our boundless 



Bg WENDELL PHILLIPS' LECTURE ON « O'CONNELL." 

prairies behind us ; with our unmeasured resources ; with our con* 
tinned peace ; with everything to favor prosperity, population and in" 
dustry, it took us forty years to treble ; but Ireland, pressed to the 
ground by every sort of injustice, oppression and want, trebled 
quicker. 

France took one hundred and sixty-six years to treble ; but this 
magnificent race that does not feel any trouble, trebled in thirty 
years ! 

But after all it is a very remarkable question. Cromwell came in '49. 
Betwixt '42 and '49 this incredibly singular race had lost 600,000 
men, had got down to 900,000 men, that is the 500,000 that were 
slaughtered through battle fields and starved in a desolate land rose 
up into a million and a half in thirty-eight years. They lost of their ac- 
cumulation 600,000 in nine years and got down to 900,000 ; but, says Mr. 
Fronde, " this 900,000 people sent into the field 200,000 warriors." 
Wonderful. Why, France that has got 38,000,000 people, stirred to 
the very bottom by German hate, contrived in the agony of her despair 
with Communes and all sorts of excitements to put one man in 50 into the 
field. Germany, snatching at the Imperial Crown and with the hate of 
two centuries concentrated in one campaign agaiftst France, managed 
to put one in 30 into the field. The South, in the agony of her resist- 
ance, when it was said she even emptied the grave yards into the camp, 
put, one man in twenty in the field. 

Massachussets, — robust, properous, healthy, untouched by war for 
nearly seventy years, — in the agony of her resistance to save the Union, 
put one man in nineteen into the field. But these 900,000 Irish, the 
relic of a million and a half, who had lost in battle all their young, adult 
and robust population — women and children, the babies in the cradle and 
the old men verging close on to the grave — 900,000 decimated relics 
— they put one man in four into the field ! Marvellous ! Well, I say, 
if this is the truth, there is no pen that can describe the infamy 

OF A GOVERNMENT THAT STRUCK AT THE NATIONALITY OF SUCH A PEOPLE. 

But as Hallam says, of such calculations, they are preposterously 
vain. 

Now of this Code of which I speak to you that has rested like an in- 
cubus on the Irish people. The last great resistance that they made 
was in 1798. Ireland never gained a point in her battle with England, 
ostensibly, except when she took advantage of some critical moment 
in the English career. As, for instance, in 1782, when Henry Grattan, 
seeing Great Britain staggering under the success of our revolution, put 
80,000 Irishmen into the field and compelled Charles James Fox to ac- 
knowledge the legislative independence of Ireland, it was a great feat. In 
sixteen years afterwards, by corruption and bribery of all sorts, the Eng- 
lish Government carried the Union ; but it was preceded by the last 
great effort of Ireland to shake off her chains. She flung herself as one 



WENDELL PHILLIPS' LECTUPvE ON " O'CONNELL." 89 

man in her utter despair against the omnipotence of the sister island 
and as usual she was trodden out in blood. r> The Protestant soldiery, 
maddened with religious hate, originally maddened with the hatred 
of the Saxon to the Celt, were let loose upon the Catholic peasants and 
no pen can describe the picture too darkly. The Ku-klux of the Caro- 
linas, the Covenanters of Scotland, in the picture Scott has drawn, — 
their cruelties are mild compared with the hideous, brutal, infamous 
procedure of the British Government. As Mr. Froude acknowledges in 
1798 fathers were shot their daughters clinging to them, — one bullet 
taking both lives. Mothers were held down and forced to look on the 
murder of child after child until the eye refused to see. Infants were 
seized from the bosoms of their mothers and were tossed with devilish 
skill from bayonet point to bayonet point along the line of half a com- 
pany ; daughters were outraged in the presence of mother and father, 
to whom the mercy of death was not given until the scene was ended. 
Ireland seemed trodden out in blood. 

This is the hour when the Irish poet puts into the mouth of Fitz- 
gerald these saddestj^of all lines : 

" Oh ! Ireland my country, the hour of thy pride and thy splendor hath 
passed, 

And thy chain, that was borne in thy moment of power, hangs heavy around 
thee at last. 

There are marks on the faith of each clime ; there are turns in the fortunes 
of men ; 

But the changes of realms or the chances of time, shall never restore thee 
again. 

Thou art chained to the wheel of the foe, by links which the world could not 
sever, 

With thy tyrant through storm and through calm thou shalt go, and thy sen- 
tence is — Banished for ever. 

Thou art doomed with the vilest to dwell : thou art left for the proud to 

disdain ; 
And the blood of thy sons and the wealth of thy soil shall be lavished, and 

lavished in vain. 
Thy riches with taunts shall be taken, thy valor with gold is repaid, 
And of millions who see thee sick and forsaken, not one shall stand forth in thine 

aid. 
In the nations thy place is left void — thou art lost in the list of the free ; 
Even realms — by the plague or the earthquake destroyed — are revived, but no 

hope is for thee." 

lit was at this moment, when the cloud came down close to earth, 
that O'Connell, then a young lawyer just admitted to the bar, flung 
himself in front of his countrymen and begged them to make one grand 
effort. Tl say just admitted to the bar, because as I said, in 1792, re- 
laxing the Code, as Great Britain always -did when she trembled, and 
then she trembled before the French Revolution, she granted to the 

I 



90 WENDELL PHILLIPS' LECTURE ON « O'CONNELL." 

Catholic the right to vote if he voted for a Protestant. And she gran- 
ted to the Catholic lawyer the right to appearance in some courts. 
O'Connell submitted to the conditions and was admitted to the bar. 

He .claimed of his people a new effort. The hierarchy of the 
Church disowned him. They said we have seen every attempt lead al- 
ways up to the scaffold ; we are not willing to risk another effort. The 
peerage of the island repudiated him. They said, we have struggled 
and bled for a half dozen centuries ; it is better to sit down content.) 
/Alone, a young man, without office, without wealth, without renown, 
he flung himself in front of the people and asked for a new effort. 
What was the power left him ? Simply the people — three or four mil- 
lions of poverty-stricken, broken-hearted peasants, standing on a soil 
soaked with the blood of their ancestors, cowering under a code of 
which Brougham said " that they could not lift their hands without 
breaking itJj What was his constituency ? If he had the Press, he 
could not appeal to them with it. for they could not read ; -he could not 
marshal them into a great party, for that was illegal. Co-operation in 
politics, committees of correspondence, the machinery of agitation, as 
we have it, was illegal. The first idea of it came from the statesman- 
like brain of Samuel Adams, the most statesmanlike brain that God 
lent to the revolution of '76. Familiar as it is with us to-day, it was a 
brand new Yankee invention from him. A committee in Chai-elston ; 
another in Baltimore ; another in Philadelphia ; another in New York ; 
another in Boston — committees of correspondence in all these ckjgs 
melted ths thirteen colonies into one thunderbolt and hurled tl\<aBfat 
Geoi'ge III. O'Connell could not imitate him for the British Con- 
vention act said, " that no political committee shall recognize the exis- 
tence of any other and shall not in any act second another." Dublin 
must stand alone she cannot correspond with Limerick ; Cork ai 
Wexford must remain isolated. |So, here he stood, with the sympathies 
of three or/our millions of poverty-stricken men behind him. Alone !j 

Well, [in order to lead Ireland in that day an Irishman must have 
four elementsjand he must have them also to a large extent to-day. 
. The first is, he must be what an Irishman calls a gentleman, every inch 
of him, ''■ from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot." That is he 
must trace his lineage back to the legends of Ireland. Well, O'Connell 
could do that ; he was one perhaps of the seven royal families of the old 
history.] 

\ Secondly, he must have proved his physical courage in the field, 
either military or the duel. It did not matter that he was a statesman; 
it did not weigh much that he was an orator ; it was of no great account 
that he was a lawyer, unless he had a proved reputation for physical 
courage!] 

Well, O'Connell knew this ; his enemies knew it. Bred at St. Orner, 
with a large leaning, to be a priest, he had the most emphatic scruples 



WENDELL PHILLIPS' LECTURE ON « O CONNELL." 91 

against the duel, and had always so announced himself ; so that when 
he had got his head above the mass, and began to be seen, a Major 
D'Esterre, Agent of the Dublin Corporation, visited him with contin- 
uous insult. Every word that had insult in it! in the English language 
was poured upon his head through the journals. O'Connell saw the 
dread alternative; he must either give satisfaction to the gentleman or 
leave the field, and at last he consented to receive a challenge. He 
passed the interval between the challenge and the day of meeting in 
efforts to avoid it, which was all attributed to cowardice. When at last 
he stood opposite to his antagonist, he said to his second : 

" God forbid that I should risk a life. Mark me, I shall fire below 
the knee." But, you know, in early practice with the pistol, you al- 
ways fire below the mark, and O'Connell's pistol took effect above the 
knee, and D'Esterre fell mortally wounded. O'Connell recorded in the 
face of Europe a vow against further duelling. He settled a pension 
on the widow of his antagonist, and in a dozen years later, when he 
held ten thousand dollars' worth of briefs in the northern courts, he 
flung them away and went to the extreme south to save for her the last 
acre she owned. 

After this his sons fought his duels, and when D'Israeli, anxious to 
prove himself a courageous man, challenged O'Connell, he put it in 
his pocket. D'Israeli, to get full advantage of the matter, sent his letter 
to the London Times, whereupon Maurice O'Connell sent the Jew a 
message that there was an O'Connell who would fight the duel if he 
wanted it, but his name was not Daniel. D'Israeli did not continue the 
correspondence. N 

[Thirdly. An Irish leader must not only he a lawyer of great acute- 
ness, but he must have a great reputation of being such.j He had got 
to lift three millions of people and fling them against a government 
that held in its hand a code which made it illegal for any one of them 
to move, and they never had moved prior to this that it did not end in 
the scaffold. O'Connell said to them : " Follow me, put your foot in 
the track that my foot has left, and I warrant you that a sheriff shall 
never put his hand on your shoulder." And for twenty and more weary- 
years, watched by the malignity of the London bar, O'Connell lifted 
these three million of men and flung them at the British Government 
at every critical moment, and no sheriff ever did put his hand on the 
shoulder of one of his followers. And when, late in life, the Queen's 
Bench of Judges, sitting in Dublin, sent him to jail, he stood almost 
alone in his interpretation of the statutes against the legal talent of 
the Island. He appealed to the House of Lords and the judges of 
England confirmed his construction of the law and set him free. 

^Fourthly. An Irish leader must be an orator, and he must have that 
magic that moulds millions of souls into one. J I shall have a word to 
say about that in a moment. O'Connell began his career, as I must 



tf? ' 



92 WENDELL PHILLIPS' LECTURE ON « O'CONNELL." 

hasten on to the most important^ part, by notifying the public that if 
nine men could meet him in a certain room in a Dublin hotel, at three 
o'clock on a certain day, he would commence agitation for the repeal of 
Catholic disabilities. "When the hour came only seven men were in 
the room. O'Qonnell waited until four, but no more joined them. 
Going down to the street, he caught two young priests by the shoulder, 
asked them into the room and locked the doors on these nine men. 
You will think very naturally it was impossible to happen that those 
ten men met in an upper room of a Dublin hotel — two of them pris- 
oners — reduced the strongest government in Europe, with the Duke of 
Wellington at its head, to surrender within twenty years. 

He began his agitation by making speeches.} He said to himself. 
"The hierarchy leave me; the nobles repudiate^me ; the wealthy scorn 
me; the educated distrust me. I will lean on the people." He was 
the first man, as Canning said, " who summoned a race into existence 
and restored the balance of the world." 

So O'Connell was the first man in Great Britain to summon a people 
into existence and check the advances of the oppression of the upper 
classes. He taught Cobden his method. In a certain sense he moalded 
the age. When Lincoln said " I drift; I seek only to know the wiohes 
of the American people;" when Gant went into office, saying, "I ha^ 
no policy; I stand here to do the will of the American people" — the,;' 
were both echoes of Daniel O'Connell. 

I He was the first great subject who taught the crown to look outside 
the House of Commons for the dictator of its policy. He went round 
making speeches, but he had no journals — no papers to report hi? 
speeches; they would not even report he had a meeting. But, as 
Lowell says, " Patience is the passion of great souls." So, with infinita 
patience he went over Ireland dropping the seed. 

At last it was suggested that he should call for a penny a week from 
every Irishman the world over. It was called " O'Connell's Rent." 

It amounted, finally, to $250,000 a year.jHe was " the great beggar- 
man of Europe," you know ! This is the charge always thrown against 
him — pecuniary corruption. He noticed it Once in a letter to Bishop 
England, of Charleston, South Carolina, when he said, "My Uncle 
Maurice died at ninety in the French service, shortly after I was ad- 
mitted to the bar. He left me £5,000 a year. I never earned less 
than £10,000 a year at the bar; £50,000 rent rolled into my hands 
also. Approaching seventy years," he said: "I stand a poorer man 

THAN I BEGAN." 

Though guineas had rolled into his hands they never stopped there. 

When he died, so far was he from being pecuniarily selfish, that his 

sons were only saved by official life from pecuniary bankruptcy. But 

J when he got possession of this money he set up journals, had his 

speeches reported; then, wherever the English tongue was spoken, the 



WENDELL PHILLIPS' LECTURE ON " O'CONNELL." 93 

Irishman's protest was heard The infamy of the English system be- 
gan to be seen, and Christendom stood aghast.*; 

Again, the press of Great Britain considered his protest. The Lon- 
don Times began to watch the young giant, slowly lifting himself on 
the sods of Ireland. The government became alarmed. They set 
themselves in vain to isolate Dublin froni Wexford and Limerick. They 
said this man, with a committee that could correspond with nothing 
else, has struck his roo;s so deep in the purpose and affection of the 
people, that he is stronger than the government; and they made the 
clause of the Convention Act — that no political committee should last 
more than fourteen days. Then O'Connell met them with the same 
patience. He went from Cork to Limerick, from Limerick to Wexford, 
from Wexford to Dublin, all over Cunnauglit and Ulster, set up com- 
mittees, had a President, Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer, and 
a list of officers, held a meeting, passed resolutions, made speeches, 
printed tracts, and when fourteen days had gone they finished, and 
they had another organization, another President, another Secretary 
and Treasurer, and so went on with their work. 

Finally, the government becoming alarmed still further, sent the 
Earl of Anglesey to L-eland with a right to put down all political meet- 
ings if he chose. Then O'Connell showed his great power. There 
never had landed an English Lord Lieutenant in that beautiful City of 
Dublin — the third in Europe in beauty — that the whole population, 
with the generous, forgetting impulses of the Irish people, had not 
swarmed out to see and welcome. 

When the Earl of Anglesey anchored in the harbor O'Connell issued 
his notice "Let every man that loves England go to the wharf; let every 
man that loves Ireland stop at home." And the next morning when 
the Enrl rot foot on the wharf with a hundred of the King's troops 
around him, there was not an Irishman to look him in the face. 

He went to the castle and issued his command putting down political 
meetings in three or four of the great districts. O'Connell met him 
thus : — He invited his friends the next morning to assemble ^at break-, =£ • 
fast at the Dublin Hotel ; he sat at the top of the table with a cup of 
tea in one hand and a buttered muffin in the other while ne talked 
politics, but there was no political meeting. At Limerick he had but- 
tered muffins and at Cork he had tea, and so the agitation went on in 
spite of the Lord Lieutenant and the " law". 

[At last, feeling strong enough, he said to those forty-shilling free- 
holders, who were Catholics, " Hitherto you have voted for two mem- 
bers of the English House of Commons, -Protestants, whose names were 
given you by your landlords — hereafter vote for one. Let your land" 
lord nominate for the second choice a Protestant that will do justice to 
ns. And then came the agony of the struggle-4-then came the cruci- 
fixion. 



94 WENDELL PHILLIPS' LECTURE ON " O'CONNELL." 

[The L'ishman held his little cleaned piece of land with no tenure at 
all. He could be turned out without any notice in thirty minutes on 
the highway to starve. And when he marched up to the ballot box to 
offend his landlord he marched not without dread peril. Shiel has 
described a scene which he witnessed. A stalwart Irishman leaning 
on the hustings submitting to the catechism of his landlord, " Pat, for 
whom did you vote?" " For the land, your honor." " Where was your 
second vote ?" "Then," said Shiel, " the strong man trembled like a reed, 
the cold sweat came over his brow; his knees smote each other; hardly 
able to articulate, he fainted at the feet of his landlord." Well he 
might. He saw a wife and child on the highway; and that was death. 
They crowded up to O'Connell 40,000. He promised them bread 
for sixty days. At last driven to utter despair and feeling this wealth 
of annual revenue in his hands, remembering how deeply Irish land- 
lords were mortgaged he thundered out the threat-" Before you turn 
peasants out of their holdings look to your mortgages, for by the living 

God I WILL BUY THEM UP AND TURN YOU OUT OF YOUR CASTLES ! 

At last, feeling stronger still, he stood for the County Clare which had 
always rested peacefully in the ducal house of Fitzgerald. He said to 
them, " Send me to the House of Commons, a Catholic, to claim that by 
the Constitution of Great Britain a man cannot forfeit his civil rights 
by his creed. In 1828 rallying against the ducal house in despite of 
the patriotism of the son who represented it and the father who repre- 
sented it, the County Clare concentrated on O'Connell and sent him 
up to London to represent it, and in 1829, in the spring, O'Connell 
went to London. 

The House of Commons was crowded to its utmost capacity, every 
square foot was a face. Marching np the aisle to the Clerk's desk, they 
handed him two oaths — the oaths that had turned that door against 
the Catholics for nearly three hundred years. One was the oath to 
abjure the Pope, and the other oath to deny the doctrines of the Catholic 
Church. With ostentatious deliberation, in the finest tone of his un- 
rivaled voice O'Connell read these oaths, slowly surveyed the house, 
and then amid profounded silence, said he, "Mr. Speaker, that I know to 
be a lie, and that I think to he one." They sent him buck to the bar to 
argue his case, and in a speech of four hours, which even Brougham 
acknowledges to* have been a masterly effort, he demonstrated if it could 
be proved, that an English subject eould not forfeit, bis civil rights by bis 
creed. Bur they voted — 116 to 60, — that be had no rights and sent him 
back to Ireland. But it was 1829. It was the beginning of the revolu- 
tionary year that tossed Charles X. across the channel, and that sent him 
to die in exile ; that sent half a dozen Kings flying along the highways of 
Europe. The Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel heard the rumble 
of the coming earthquake. They well knew that the English army was 



WENDELL PHILLIPS' LECTURE ON " O'CONNELL." 95 

recruited in Ireland, that O'Connell was going Lome to tell the Irish that 
the Catholics had no rights which Great. Britain was bound to respect. It 
was the ordinary cause of England's fairness. (.There is not a ju>t law on 
the statutes of Great Britain that is ten years old^j She never yielded a 
point, except when she was afraid to deny it, and she never will ? And so 
with this rumble of the coming ear! hquake in his ears, the old Iron Duke, 
assisted by Peel, swept from the statute book every vestige but one of the 
code of Elizabeth. It was the proudest government in Europe with the 
hero of a hundred fields at its head surrendering to teu men in an upper 
room ! O'Connell did it by his eloquence, largely, chiefly by his eloquence. 
He had announced the two corner stones of his career. One was, " No 
political change is worth a drop of human blood." He said to the 
British government, " I will never draw the sword*" And again he said, 
"Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong. I will never turn 
a truth, I will never postpone a principle. I will never sacrifice one 
issue in order to carry another." Nothing is politically right that is 
morally wrong. These were the corner stones upon which he had builded, 
by words, eloquence. And I think God never furnished forth a man, ever 
since Demosthenes, for his work more lavishly than he did the great Irish 
Chief I know how much I am claiming and I should not dare to claim it 
alone; you would despise it as the partial judgment of one who idolized 
his hero. But wheu John Randolph of Boanoke, an old slaveholder who 
hated an Irishman almost as much as he did a yankee, — when he got to 
England, saw O'Connell and heard him, he lifted up his hands and said, 
" This is the man, those are the lips, the most eloquent that speak Eng- 
lish in my day." And I think he was right.J $7v(jt , 

I know full well the majesty of Webster ; I have felt the magnetism of 
Henry Clay ; I could see eloquence under the iron logic of:Otd&»nn ; and 
Prentiss <>f Mississippi wielded a wand such as few tongues eTjerp'assessed. 
Webster and Cuoare I don't forget, nor the living orators of American 
fame ; but all of them rolled into one neyer surpassed, and there 

IS NO ONE OF THE1T THAT EYER EQUALLED THE GREAT IRISH CHIEF." 

And this is certainly true when you compare the variety of his gifts. In 
the first place he had what Webster had, and that is half the battle in a 
public tribune, a magnificent presence, a majestic physiognomy. God put 
that royal soul into a bod// as royal. Attitude, measurement, gesture — 
every one seemed to be certain that he would be obeyed. lie was like 
our own Daniel. You remember when our Daniel came home from 
Washington in '46, and called a meeting in Eaneuil Hall, to protest 
against the dissolution of the whig party. Four thousand whigs went to 
meet him. Russell Lowell has described the scene. He says, '* This 
ocean of eager faces were lifted up; Daniel reared his majestic person, 
his brow charged with thunder, and, said he, 'I am a Whig, a Massachus- 
etts Whig, a constitutional Whig, a revolutionary Whig, a Faneuil Hall 



96 WENDELL PHILLIPS' LECTURE ON " 

Whig 5 and if you break the Whig party, where am I to go V " Ajtd 
Lowell said, " I trembled to think where he could go." " But," he said, 
"if he had been five feet five, I should have said, 'Well, hang it ! who 
cares where you go V " When John Russell went down to Yorkshire foi 
Reform bill, l he great Yorkshire hunters said, "That little shrimp? 

hat ! He carry the reform bill ?" 'Oh," said Sir Sydney Smith, « It 
was the labors of that great session that shrunk him." So you see a little 
O'Connell would not have been any O'Connell at all. Then he had, wbal 
Webster never had, what Henry Clay had, infinite grace, that magnet- 
ism that, melts every hearer into the speaker. I saw him at over sixty 
six years of age, every attitude was beauty, every gesture grace ; you 
could only think as you looked at him, of a greyhound, it would have 
been delicious to haw watched him, if he had not spoken a word. Mac- 
ready or Booth never came near him in the voice that comes from the 
exquisite attitude of a fine person. Then again he had what so few 
American speakers have had, a voice that covered the gamut. 

I have heard him in Exeter Hall where, with a voice of imperial volume, 
he indicted a nation. I heard him say once, " Americans ! I send my 
voice, careering like the thunder storm across the Atlantic, to tell South 
Carolina that God's thunderbolts are hot, and to remind the negro ihat the 
dawn of his redemption is breaking ;" and I seemed to hear his tones echo 
back to London from the Rocky Mountains. And then again, with the 
slightest flavor of the Irish brogue, he would tell a story that would make 
all Exeter Hall laugh ; and a moment afterwards, with tears in his voice, 
like a Scotch song, he spoke, and every man was in tears. All this with- 
out any effort— effortless ; you got provoked with him because he would 
not make an effort. I heard him, perhaps, a score of times, and I do not 
think more than three times he ever lifted himself to the full sweep of his 
power. 

He abounded in wit, and in the midst of an argument disconcerted you 
with a joke that carried you completely by surprise. He was once 
summoned to Court, out of the hunting field, where a young friend of his 
of an humble order was on trial for his life. The evidence gathered 
around a hat found by the oody of the murdered man, and which was 
recognized as the hat <>f the prisoner. The lawyers tried to breakdown 
the evidence, confuse the testimony and get some relfef from the directness 
of the circumstances, but in vain, until at last they called for O'Connell. 
He came in, flung his riding whip and hat on the table, was told the 
circumstances, and taking up the hat said to the witness, " Whose hat is 
this?" " Well, Mr. O'Connell, that is Mickey's hat." "How do you 
know it V> " I will swear to it, sir." And did you really find it on the 
murdered man F " I did that, sir." " But you're not ready to swear 1 hat ?" 
"I am indeed, Mr. O'Connell " "Pat, do you know what hangs on your 
word ? — a human soul. And with that dread burden, ar^ you ready to 



WENDELL PHILLIPS' LECTURE ON " O'CONNELL" 97 

tell this jury that the hat, to your certain knowledge, belongs to 'the 
prisoner:" " Y-yes, Mr. O'Connell, yes, I am?" O'Cormell takes the 
hat lo the nearest window and peers into, •* J-a-m-e-s James. Now Pat, 
did you see that name in the hat?" " I did, Mr. O'Connell !" " You knew 
it was there V " YeS, sir, I read it after I picked it up." " No name in 
the hat, j our Honor." So again he was in the House of Commons, 
returned by the County Clare ; he eatered into it in 1S30, yes ! In 1S30, 
he entered, and generous Irishman that he was, he elevated that Reform 
ministry by his vote into their seats. Saved on one contested vote the 
government from defeat, by his single following. And when Earl Grey 
took his place, that very ministry attempted at once to pass a.' fresh 
coercion bill and bathe it in the blood of Ireland. Well, when lie took 
his seat in the House of 1830, the London Times visited him with its 
constant indignation, reported his speeches awry, turned them in.-i.'e out 
and made nonsense of them; treated him as the JV. Y. Herald used 10 treat 
us abolitionist* twenty years ago. So one morning he rose and said, 
u Mr. Speaker, you know I have never opened my lips in this House, and 
I expended twenty years of hard work in getting the right to enter it — I 
have never lifted my voice in this House, but in behalf of the saddest 
people that the sun shines on. Is it fair play, Mr. Speaker, is it what 
you call ' English fair play/ that the Press af this city will not let my 
voice be heard ?" The next, day the Times sent him word that, as he had 
found fault with their manner of reporting him, they never would report 
him at all, they never would print his name in their parliamentary 
column. So the next day, when prayers were ended, O'Connell rose. 
Those reporters of the Times who were in the gallery rose also, folded 
their arms, ostentatiously put. away their pencils and made. all the show 
they could to let everybody know how it was. 

Well, you know nobody has any right to be in the English gallery 
during the session, and, if any member notices them, the mere notice 
clears the gallery and room ; only the reporters can stay after that notice. 
O'Connell rose. One of the members said, ,l Before the member from 
Clare opens his speech, be will allow me to point his attention to that 
instance of ' passive resistance ' in the gallery whose gospel he is going to 
preach." "Thank you," said O'Connell: "Mr. Speaker, I observe 
strangers in the gallery." Of course they left; of course the next day, 
in the columns of the London Times,there were no Parliamentary debates, 
and for the first time, with the exception of Richard Cobden's case, the 
London Times called for quarter, and said to O'Connell, u If you give up 
the quarrel, we will." Later down, when he was advocating repeal of the 
land law, when forty or fifty thousand men were gathered at the meeting, 
he was sitting at the breakfast table. The London Times for that year 
had absolutely disgraced itself, and that's saying a great deal, and its 
reporters, if recognized, would have been torn to pieces. So, as O'Connell 



98 WENDELL PHILLIPS' LECTURE ON « O'CONNELL." 

was breakfasting, tbe door opened, and two or three English reporters, 
Gurncy, and among others our well-known friend Russell, of Bull Run 
notoriety, entered the room and said, ''Mr. O'Counell, we are Ihe reporters 
of the Times" ''And," said Russell, " I dared ndt enter that crowd.'' 
"Shouldn't think you would," replied 0' Connell. ''Have you had any 
breakfast?" "No, sir," said ho, "we hardly dared to ask for any." 
" Shouldn't think you would," answered O'Connell ; " sit down here." So 
they shared his breakfast, and then he took Bull Run by the arm in his 
carriage, sent for a table and chair and sat him down, and asked him 
whether he had his pencils well sharpened and plenty of paper, as he 
intended to speak for some time. Bull Run answered, "Yes." O'Connell 
then stood up and addressed the audience in Irish ! 

But it was not his wit, abundant as it always was, both upon friend 
and foe, for it was only when he was advocating Chartism and Universal 
suffrage by the side of Hume, that most involved and confused of all 
English speakers, that he said, " Tou would speak very plain, Mr. Hume, 
if you would finish one sentence before you began the next but one after 
it." But it was not his wit — ready and potent as that always was. 
Waldo Emerson says, " There is no true eloquence unless there is a man 
behind the speech." Thomas Carlyle speaks of "this God-anointed king, 
whose single word melts millions of souls in itself." And these two men 
describe O'Connell. England saw and Ireland knew that behind that 
speech was a man ; one that could neither be bought, nor corrupted, nor 
cheated; and the whole island laid all the strength it had in his hands. 
There was scarcely ever such a master of millions in the whole history of 
Europe. Measure him by others. 

There was the meeting at Clontarf, on the 8th of October, '42, that was 
to be held. The government, supposing that there would be two hundred 
thousand men there (and really four hundred thousand came), determined 
to create a collision between the people and the troops, and charge it on 
O'Connell and imprison him. So, as the 8th of October was Sunday, at 
4 o'clock Friday afternoon, too late, as they supposed, for the knowledge 
to get abroad, the Lord Lieutenant placarded Dublin with a proclamation 
forbidding the meeting, and sen-t a regiment down to the green to encamp 
upon it. At 5 o'clock the placard was issued. At 6 o'clock O'Connell 
heard of this, and he sent out twelve of his friends on horseback. One 
died from the fatigue of that journey, — and bis simple word to the 
people was, " O'Connell says go home. The Liberator says go home !" 
And of the one hundred and fifty thousand men pressing down towards 
Clontarf, only about ten thousand reached the ground, laughed at tbe 
troops and went away. 

But measure him with great epochs. In '29, '30 and '31, when the 
Whigs tried to carry the reform bill and the members of the House oi 
Lords threw it out, all England tossed with riot; cities were in the hands 



WENDELL PHILLIPS' LECTURE ON "O'CONNELL.'' 99 

of the mob for weeks; the streets of Bristol ran blood. Melbourne, 
Russell, Mcintosh, Macaulay, lords of men of intellect, sought to pacify 
law-abiding intelligent John Bull. "Don't mob" they said. " If you 
won't mob, we will give you the bill." But all the Whig peerage could 
not hold back John Ball. So take 1835 in this country— the mob year 
when they flung Price into the Ohio, and the year after shot Lovejoy and 
tried to shoot Garrison. Webster and the Whigs said, " Don't, mob, for 
the abolition sentiment will travel much further on the shouts of a mob 
than the most eloquent lips will carry it ; you help the Abolitionists.' 
But all the Whigs and all the papers could not hold back Protestant 
Yankeedom. And our great cities roared with riot. 

There stood O'Connell alone, without an office ; behind him, 3,000,000 
of Irishmen Irishmen! Their blood quicksilver. They lived under 
laws they hated, and there never was a law in Ireland that they 
ou-ht not to hate- Their loved Bishop of Kerry told them, in 1799 
"Allegiance and protection run hand in hand. You have never had 
protection, and you don't owe allegiance." Under that teaching stood 
these millions of men. O'Connell said to them far twenty years-no t ; one 
excited week—" He that commits a crime, helps the enemy, and tor 
twenty years Ireland saw a peace such as neither Cromwell, with all his 
barbarity, nor England, with all her omnipotence, were ever able to 

O'Connell owed it to the integrity of the whole of a life that vindicated 
itself. I use "integrity," in the full, old Latin sense- upright, and whole. 
He never took a leaf from the American gospel of compromise that yields 
one principle in order to carry another. He never denied one truth to 
help another. He never shut his eyes on one race to vmd.cate another. 
When Kossuth came to Boston and went down to Faneuil Hall and he 
said "There is a flag without a stain ; there is a people without a crime, 
we said* to him, "Welcome! you who come to break the chains of an 
oppressed people; but have you not a word for these 4,000,000 of men 
bending under a bondage twice as bitter as that of Hungary ; and he 
answered that he would praise anything and he would help anybody to 
help Hungary. O'Connell never said that, Before I knew O Oonnell or 
had ever seen him, I had a look at him through the spectacles of Harriet 
Martineau and Henry Brougham. When I met Sir Thomas Buckstone 
one of the old English abolitionists, I said to him, "Is O'Connell real y 
the scamp that you Englishmen paint him V and the old lory stared ; the 
old Tory, who had been all his life fighting against the schemes of which 
O'Connell was the originator. « Scamp !" said he, - be was the hones est 
man, in my day, that ever entered the House of Commons ' And then 
he told me this story. Said he : « When O'Connell entered the louse 
there was one other member beside myself who spoke in the anti-slavery 
cause, Mr. Lushington, and so narrow and small had our party becon* 



100 WENDELL PHILLIPS' LECTUEE ON "O'CONNELL." 

that we made a private arrangement ; when* Mr. Lushington spoke I 
agreed to cheer him, and when I spoke he cheered me. At the time 
O'Connell entered the House, twenty-seven members, representing the 
West India interest, voted for slavery. They went to him and said : ' Mr. 
O'Connell, at last you are in the House j you have got two votes - u now, if 
you will never go to Freemasons' Tavern with Macaulay and Brougham, 
or vote against slavery, here are twenty-seven votes on every Irish ques- 
tion. If you mix up with that set, count us your enemies.' Suppose he 
had been an American j he would have said, l< It's a big thing ; I think 
I'll let the negro slide." Buckstone went on : " O'Connell said, ' God 
knows that I am come here to plead the cause of the saddest subjects 
that the King has ; but may my right hand forget its cunning and my torTgue 
cleave to the roof of my mouth, if, to serve Ireland — even Ireland — I 
forget the negro for one single hour.' And from that moment," said 
Buckstone, " Lushington and I never went out into the lobby to be counted 
that O'Connell was not sure to be there " 

So some few years afterwards, I went into Conciliation Hall when he 
was arguing for repeal. Let me say in his argument for repeal he only 
followed the policy of so wise a man as Henry Grattan, who, when men 
asked him, he said, *' Gentlemen knock at the nation, keep knocking at the 
nation, and when you have knocked, long enough you will get justice." 
That was O'Connell's method too He was arguing for repeal, and he 
lifted from the table a thousand pound note sent them from New Orleans 
and stated to be from the slaveholders of that city. Daniel lifted the 
draft, and going to the front of the platform, he said, " This is a draft of 
«£1,000 from the slaveholders of New Orleans, the unpaid wages of the 
negro. Mr. Treasurer, I suppose the treasury is empty." The Treasurer 
nodded to sbow him it was, and he went on, u Old Ireland is very poor, but 
thank God she is not poor enough to take the unpaid wages of anybody ; 
send it back." So when a gentleman from Boston went to him with a 
letter of introduction which he sent up when be went to see him at his 
house, in Merrion Square. O'Connell came down as was his wont, to his 
door, put out both his hands and drew him into the library. " I am glad 
to see you," said he, " I am always glad to see anybody from Massachu- 
setts, a free State. God bless you." ''But oh !" said the guest, «' this 
is slavery you allude to, Mr. O'Connell ; I would like to say a word to you 
in justification of that institution." " Very well, sir, free speech in this 
house, say anything you please ; but before you begin to defend a man's 
right to own his brother, will you allow me to step out and lock up my 
spoons." 
That was the man. The ocean of that philanthropy knew no shore 
, he never equivocated or compounded. [Your eloquent brother on the other 
\ side of the ferry says, '' We don't want men of words; we want men of 
' deeds." Ah ! our friend Henry Ward struck the root out of which he 

J 



WENDELL PHILLIPS' LECTURE ON " O'CONNELL." 101 

grew. This was a man of words ; nothing but words upon words. Alone 
he emerged from the despised blood-soaked sod of Ireland up to England, 
and held the balance of power. ^"When I parted from him, this despicable 
Irishman ; the hated catholic ; this man of words : — the Whig party had 
sent him carte blanche, and it was said in London ho had sixty odd 
members who always voted with him — it was called " O'Connell's tail." 
They said to him, " What shall we do for you, O'Connell." But, mark 
yon, this man that died poor and lived for the people, never asked an 
office, never held out his right hand toward the government for anything 
but justice to the dumb peasants whom he spoke for. They said to him, 
" Shall we make you Lord Chancellor of Ireland ? It is done. Shall we 
sweep the last vestige of the Code of Elizabeth away and make you Lord 
Chancellor of England ? It is done. Only save the Whig party !" I 
left the Irishman, the Catholic, the ''man of words," holding the Whig 
party in one hand and the Iron Duke and the Tories in the other. 
He was deciding TO WHICH HE WOULD GIYE — THE GOVERNMENT OF THIy 
REALM 1 f 



(JUST ISSUED) 

The Church and the Temperance Question— 

4^ Election of the Lectures, Addresses and Letters on Temperance of the 
Trtr-V Rev. Thomas Burke, O. P., Right Rev Bishop Bayley of Newark, N. J. 
Right Rev. Bishop Persico of Savannah, Ga., Very Rev. Father Albino, 
Passionist Missionary, Rev. James McDevitt, President National Union, and 
other Cathol?> VUvines. 

CONTENTS: 

£. aJislaap Bayley's Lecture at Jersey City, Not. 1871. Subject 
•Intemperance — How to check its ravages." The Bishop details his experience 
in this country and what he observed in his travels through France. Spain, 
Italy, England and Ireland, during a visit to Europe, showing how Americans, 
Englishmen and other nationalities suffer from this scourge as well as the Irish, 
and then points out " how the conflagration may be arrested." The style 
is simple, clear, and attractive. 

2. Bishop Bayley's Lecture before the New Jersey Catholic 
^Tnion Convention, April, 1872. " The Catholic Church the Great Temper- 
ance Society." The Right Rev. Lecturer explains the attitude of the Church 
towards the Total Abstinence movement, and the position of the clergy in that 
relation, and then shows how the doctrines of the Church "' require Total 
Abstinence as a religious duty " in certain cases. He enters upon a full exami- 
nation of the system recently adopted by the State Unions, under the auspices 
of the Church, and shows how the Societies may prove successful and enduring 
based upon the great maxim, " Touch not — Taste not — Handle not !" 

3. Father Burke's Lecture at the Paterson Convention. " The 
Christian and Catholic Virtue of Temperance." The Great Irish Divine 
throws his -whole soul into the subject, portrays the beauties of Temperance 
and the odiousness of Intemperance with the genius and skill of a painter 
and rises to the full height of his oratorical power in appealing to his country- 
men in the name of Faith and Fatherland to expel the great foe of humanity 
from their midst. 

4. Father Burke's Serenade Oration at the reception given him by 
the Jersey City Societies, May 1872 — an open air speech. Here he speaks not 
alone as an ecclesiastic but as an Irishman to Irishmen. He traces the con- 
nection between the Irish National Cause and the Catholic Temperance Move- 
ment, and gives a vivid and thrilling view of the glories in store for the Irish 
nation if American Irishmen rally around the standard of the Catholic Tern, 
perance Movement. This speech has been said to be " the poetry of our 
Temperance literature." 

5. Letter of Bishop Persico of Savannah, Ga., to the Paterson Con- 
vention, a glowing eulogium on Temperance. 

6. Letter of Father Albino, the celebrated Passionist missionary, to 
the Jersey City demonstration. 

7. Letter of the Rev. James McDevitt, Pres. Catholic Total Abstinence 
Union of America, to the Paterson Convention. 

8. National Union Joint Address, by State Presidents to the Societie* 
of America. 

9. Hymn of the Temperance Union, by JaB. W. O'Briet 

^ Bound in book form, with handsome cover illustrated with a oeautifu) 
ftrrtrait of Father Burke engraved from an approved photograph and present- 
ing a life-like picture of the illustrious Dominican. 

PRICE 10 CENTS. 

J. W. O'Brien, 142 Nassau St., N. Y. 



jmymm |wmuj tfoe |j 




HOW TO ADVANCE THE GOOD CAUSE. 

Two difficulties meet the workers in the cause of Total Abstinence in oth 
day : First, it is difficult to get members ; Secondly, it is difficult to keep all 
that are obtained. Every Society goes on from month to month and year to 
year, gaining some and losing some, steadily. This is the rule. The process ol 
gaining adherents has been slow and laborious. The number who fall away 
and the regularity of that process cause worriment of mind and pain of heart 
to the true friends of our Associations, among the clergy as well as the laity. 
We have long asked ourselves : " How can we manage our movement so that 
more men may join us and our members show more devotion to the cause of 
temperance 7" 

The teachings of our prelates and priests upon the subject afford the best 
means of surmounting all obstacles. If each man in every congregation were 
to read one of these speeches or lectures quietly at home, or if some little 
boy or girl were to read one aloud tc father, mother and brothers at every 
Catholic fireside, a vast number of adherents would be gained. 

Discourses like those of Father Burke and Bishop Bayley come from the 
heart and go to the heart ; they are calculated to draw countless numbers of the 
heedless, and the hardened, from the clutches of the demon of intemperance. 
But how are these speeches and lectures to be sent into Catholic families T It 
has been done. The pastor of the flock has a thousand left in the pews, and 
posts bright little " Altar boys " at the door on Sundays, handing those glorious 
messages of Temperance and Religion to the rugged, honest men of the parish 
M they come from mass. The Total Abstinence Societies of the parish procure 
thousands and send committees through the blocks and the rows of houses ia 
their district leaving the temperance speech, sermon or lecture in the mansion, 
and the tenement apartments alike. 

The seed thus sown produces a fruitful harvest, and when men are led into 
the ranks through this process of quiet ^persuasion and home conviction, they 
are the best of members; they prove true themselves and are eager to spread 
the faith that is in them. The progress made is rapid, and steady, and endur- 
ing., The ground is firm and the Temperance organizations built on such basis, 
brave every test and stand there a shelter and a refuge for the people under the 
shadow of the church. So we earnestly urge this system for general adoption. 
We ask pastors and societies to join in this great crusade, so that when some of 
our great priests or prelates give us a discourse calculated to arouse our peo« 
pie and lead them into the ways of temperance, his words may reach half a 
million of people and so produce the grandest results. 

Signed in behalf of the Board of Government, 

JAMES W. O'BRIEN, President, 

Catholic Total Abstinence Union of New Jersey. 

142 Nassan St., N. T., Jane 21, 1872. 

■ — ■ ■ » 

l3F*The following Catholic Temperance Discourses are furnished in pamphlet form, fof 
gtneral circulation : 

No. 1. " Intemperanoe — How to Check its Ravages," By Bishop Bayley; 

No. 2. "The Catholic Churoh, the Great Temperance Society, " By Bishop Bayley. 

No. 3. "The Christian and Catholic Virtue of Temperance,"..... By Father Burke. 

No. 4. " Temperance and Patriotism " (with Portrait) By Father Uurte. 

•OCT— 4J5.00 pet 1000; $3.00 for 300, by Express ; $1.00 for 100, post paid. 
Address 

/. /. O'UABONY, gee, ear* J. W. O'BHIXJT. 148 Hum St., N. T. 



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New Pu' lications by J -W. O'BRIEN. 

OUDE'S CRUSADE, 

The Summing up of Both Sides. 
Contents. 

1.—" ANSWER TO FATHER BURKE."— Lecture delivered by James 
Anthony Froude, in New York, Nov. 30, 1872. 

2.— FATHER BURKE'S REJOINDER.— Lecture by Very Rev. T. N. 
Burke, O. P., in Brooklyn, Dec. 17th, 1872, in reply to " Mr. Froude's 
Last Words." 

3:— JOHN MITCHEL'S LECTURE ON "THE CRUSADE OF MR. 
FROUDE," delivered before the " Liberal Club," New York, Dec. 
20th, 1872. 

4.-*- WENDELL PHILLIPS' philippic against Froude, Lecture de- 
livered in Boston, Dec. 3d, 1872, entitled " A JUROR'S VERDICT." 

6.— LIFE AND LABORS OF FATHER BURKE, by J. W. O'Brien, 
with the editorials of leading American journals on the " Anglo- 
Irish Controversy." 

6.— SPLENDID POEM by the Rev. Father Ryan, " the poet priest 
of the South," entitled " Erin's Flag." 

Making a handsome octavo pamphlet of 80 pages, neatly bound. Il- 
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WENDELL PHILLIPS' Lecture on "DANIEL O'CONNELL,'' 
delivered at Steinway Hall, Dec. 9th, 1872. Price, 10 cents. 

"CATHOLIC TEMPERANCE TEXT BOOK." 

Complete collection of the Lectures of Father Burke, Archbishops 
Bayley and Manning, Bishop Persico and other divines on 
Temperance, with the Life of Father Burke. Illustrated. Pub- 
lished with the approval and revision of the great Dominican. 
PRICE, 25 CENTS. 

"CHURCH AND TEMPERANCE." 

Four Lectures, with Poems, Portraits, etc. PRICE, 10 CEttTS. 

"CATHOLIC TEMPERANCE TRACTS." 

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